There used to be a very good South African restaurant in Amsterdam called ‘Pygmalion’, located at the beginning of the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat, a narrow street with art galleries and antique boutiques running all the way over the canals from the Herengracht to the Rijksmuseum.

Apart from introducing standards such as the decimal kilogramme, litre and metre, and ordering every citizen who did not yet have an official surname to register one, Napoleon Bonaparte of France is also accredited for decorating large areas of Europe with plane trees.